You know that when you arrive at an airport at 2.40 in the morning and theres a cheery guy singing a welcome song that its going to be a friendly happy place!! We had such a great time in the Cook Islands, we chose a great hostel which was on the west side of the island and it had a pool and hammocks on this amazing postcard perfect beach. We have never seen anywhere so stunning...there was white sand, turquiose water and palm trees swaying in the wind, the sea ...

So our Auckland entry wasn't suppose to be for another few weeks...but will explain later!!! After leaving the corromandel we thought we would make our way towards Auckland..stay for one night on the outskirts and then go north to the Bay of Islands for our last few weeks in NZ. We were originally going to stay in a caravan park that was by the beach and quite remote but at the last minute I thought we should head to one in Manauka which is south of the city. We ...

So Rodney got us safely up to the Corromandel peninsula. And at last we got to see some beauty in the North Island!! Our first stop was Whangamata, we had read about a fish and chip shop here highly recommended by Lonely planet so we thought we would treat ourselves!!! We sat on a really pretty beach and had them which was nice. We stayed at a motorcamp there for the night and although Whangamata was a really tiny place it was really noisy all night long!! Th...

So on the way to Rotorua we got pulled over by the police because Rodney was bellowing smoke out as we chugged up a hill. It only confirmed our worries that Rodney was on his way out! We made it to Rotorua and checked into a caravan park and went and had a little walk around. Now Rotorua is all built on geothermal things so it stinks.....nearly as bad as Kams wind (and thats saying something) so with the lovely smell in the air we wandered down to ...

We were really looking forward to Taupo as we thought it would be similar to Queenstown on the South Island. Its nothing like Queenstown!!! It was really busy and the weather was awful most of the time we were there, we did manage to do a walk to Huka Falls which were some very impressive falls. We had about a 2 hour walk to see them along a chrystal clear river, the river has to go through this very narrow chasm and the power of the water was amazing to see, it...